Frankenstein syndrome: Why do we fear making humans?

From IVF to artificial wombs, why does each advance in reproductive technology still conjure up visions of monsters or Hitler clones?

WHEN Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, the Vatican spokesman for bioethics, objected to IVF pioneer Robert Edwards receiving the 2010 Nobel prize for medicine, he stressed that he was speaking in a personal capacity.

But opposition to assisted conception is official papal policy. In 2004, Pope John Paul II condemned IVF as “a technology that wants to substitute true paternity and maternity and therefore that does harm to the dignity of parents and children alike”. The “conjugal …